Adding & Modifying a Category
When adding or modifying a category you are presented with the
following fields and options.
Category Details
Category Status: Setting a category to inactive is an alternative way
to take a category down from your site without deleting it completely.
If set to inactive visitors will not be able to view the category and will
instead get a 404 page not found warning.
Category Name: This is the name for this particular category and
the only required field on the page. All other fields are optional. Note
that any articles or products associated with a category will remain
associated even if the category name is modified.
Parent Category: If you want to organise your categories into a
hierarchy structure and you want this category to be a sub-category
of another category then select it’s parent category here.
URL Slug: This is only important if you are using friendly urls. The
url slug is a means to provide a more readable and seo friendly url
for the category. For example a standard category url might look
something like http://www.mysite.com/?category=1234567890 and if
you enter an url slug eg. widgets/green the new friendly url would be
http://www.mysite.com/widgets/green/ - It is recommended to settle
on a slug and not change it once set. If you change the slug on an
established page then any manually placed links going to the old
friendly url would ideally need to be updated.
Main Content: This is where you can add and edit the main content
for the category. This can be anything from a simple line of text to a
few paragraphs or even more complex content such as embeded
images, videos or widgets.
If you want to copy and paste content into a content area please
bear in mind that the copied content might bring across extra
unneeded html code that can bloat or even break your page layout,
to help get around this there are “paste as plain text” and “paste from
word” buttons in addition to the normal paste function.
There are two ways to upload and add images to a content area.
The first way is to use the method outlined below under Category
Images. The other way is to use the file browser. To open the file
browser, click the Insert/Edit Image button (the little tree on the
toolbar) then on the dialog box that pops up click the Browse button
to the right of the image url field. This will open the file browser
where you can upload images and then select them to add to into
the content area. Images uploaded thought the file browser are
stored in the data/images directory and are included with any
backups you make.
For advanced html editing you can click the html button on the
toolbar or toggle the editor toolbar off and edit the html code directly.
If the category is using a page template that has more than one
content area specified then additional content areas will be shown
here below the main content area. Each content area has it’s own
toolbar to allow you to easily format text.
The following special tags can also be used in any category content
area:
{display_items} - displays item listings
{page_num} - displays current page number
{contact_form} - displays a contact form
Meta Description: This is used mainly to provide search engines
with a useful description of the page. Search engines will sometimes
use this text when displaying links to the page. Enter one or two
sentences with appropriate keywords but don’t just list keywords.
Meta Keywords: Comma separate keywords and key-phrases in
this field to help search engines index your pages better. SEO wise
this is less important than the Meta Description.
Category Images
You can upload images to any particular category. Category images
can be used in a few different ways. For example if you are using a
dynamic slider you can have it displaying images from a particular
category. There is also an advanced feature to display a category
image table which generates a table of category image links. When
modifying a category you can also drag or copy these uploaded
images into your content areas and resize them as required.
Category Files
You can upload files such as PDF or ZIP files to a category. When
files have been added to a category you can drag or copy and paste
the generated download links into your content areas or anywhere
on your site. There is the option to use a standard download link or a
secure download link that will only work for registered users who are
logged in.
Category Visibility Options
Page Template: Select the page template that you want to use for
this category. Page templates are typically designed and uploaded
by a web developer and they determine the overall design and
layout of the page.
Heading: If this is set to visible then a heading will be displayed at
the top of the main page content area. The heading will be whatever
the category name is. If you hide this you can add a custom heading
in the main content area.
cont...
Description: You can hide the content on the page by setting this to
hidden.
Menu Link: If this is set to hidden then any dynamic menus will not
display a link to this particular category.
Override Menu Link: If you are using a dynamic category menu on
your website you can override the default link by adding custom html
code here.
In Sitemap: Choose whether to include this category in the sitemap
or not. For example you might want to hide restricted areas of your
website and exclude them from the sitemap.
Category Listings
Listings Visibility: Choose whether to show or hide listings for this
category. If you are using the category as a stand-alone page you
should set this to hidden.
Listings Format: Select the format for this categories listings.
Listing formats are typically coded and uploaded by a web developer
and they determine how listings will look on the page. Select a
format begining with “products_” if you are going to display products
in this category. Select a format begining with “news_” if you are
going to display news articles in this category.
Number of Columns: Set the number of items you want to display
across the page.
Number of Rows: Set the number of items you want to display
down the page.
Thumbnail Width: Set the width for thumbnail images.
Thumbnail Height: Set the height for thumbnail images.
Keep Aspect Ratio: If checked thumbnails are resized to fit within
the given thumbnail dimensions. If unchecked thumbnails are
resized to exactly match the thumbnail dimensions.
Advanced Search Filter: A category by default will display only
items that are assigned to it. The search filter allows you to override
this behaviour and control what items are displayed in the category.
This is only needed for special case scenarios and can be left blank
if you don’t need it.
eg. cat=0,sort=priority
Reserved names for the advanced search filter:
•
cat - list items from other categories eg.
catid1,catid2,catid3;catid4,catid5 (comma=or)
(semicolon=andgroups)
•
sort - override the default sort order which is 'priority_offset',
other options are 'id', 'id_r', 'priority', 'priority_r', 'name',
'name_r', 'date', 'date_r', 'random' (_r indicates reverse order)
(date only works on news articles) (random can be used to
display items randomly on a particular page but is not suitable
for pagination)
•
phrase - search items using a general search phrase,
typically for searching item ids, name, keywords - specify
negative keywords with a preceding hyphen eg -keyword or
perform an exact match with square brackets eg. [exact
keyphrase]
•
price - display only products within a specified price range eg.
0,200 for 0 to 200 - or enter a single price to display listings
greater or equal to the specified price
Other names can be used in custom scenarios eg.
bedrooms=3,location=nass etc.
User Group Permissions
Select who can view this categories content. If you check “Everyone”
then anybody can view it. If you check “Registered Users“ then only
registered users who are logged in will be able to view it. You can
also setup custom user groups and only allow specific users access.
CMS Help - Categories - Adding & Modifying a Category